


Flaxen, Waxen

by knightcap



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Oneshot, Shaving, Trans Michael Mell, also michael mell is gay and trans in every fic i have ever and will ever write so jot that down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 10:52:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11965905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightcap/pseuds/knightcap
Summary: Second puberty sucks, and Michael doesn't know what to do with this crap on his face. He can't exactly ask either of his Moms to deal with the issue. Instead, he's going to have to rent out a Dad.





	Flaxen, Waxen

Testosterone is _great._ Pump him full of that sweet man juice every two weeks and he’ll sing its praises with the needle still an inch deep in his ass (and he has, because it was embarrassing, and he needed to do _something_ for a distraction. Looking back, that probably didn’t do anything to make him feel any less awkward.)

But whatever, he’s losing his train of thought, and Michael would rather not take the nosedive into “Top 10 Inappropriate Reactions Compilation featuring one (1) Michael Mell” for the umpteenth time, so he forces himself to look back toward the positive. Transitioning. Great stuff. Absolutely no embarrassing side effects whatsoever, _none_. None that he’s going to talk about, at least.

This whole redirecting the thought process stuff is still something he’s working on. Alright. He’s past the worst of it, not that the worst was anything worse than just getting used to something new, really, but he’s way too old for having to figure out how to _shave_. Michael doesn’t shave, hasn’t needed to or cared enough to in years, but the scraggly black stubble struggling to fill the skin not already claimed by swollen acne is… it’s a bad look.

Maybe it’d be cool to have some smooth stubble, buzzed down even and sharp, he doesn’t know. But this sucks. And he can’t even fix it, he doesn’t know how, because he tried once with some of the cheapos his moms keep under the sink and he wet his face and soaped it a little and dragged up, and promptly gave himself a nick the size of his thumbnail, and _that_ was the end of _that._

Besides, razors made him nervous, and he wasn’t old enough to buy them himself, and he didn’t trust those pink monstrosities under the sink now, so he sucked it up and dabbed the blood off and tried to ignore the way his stomach twisted and breathe it out, and resigned himself to shitty stubble for the rest of his life and hopefully an eventual cool beard instead of perpetual half-assed scraggle.

Beard.

Something clicks. Michael gets an idea.

“Lemme touch it!” Jeremy insists two weeks later, the growth finally long enough for his oblivious ass to notice, and Michael snorted out a laugh and has barely finished the nod of permission when Jeremy’s gross hands are clapped on his cheeks, rubbing and assessing patches and prickles with an entertaining stream of rambles and expressions. It’s nice to hear him get his feet back under him, which is to say, not caring about rambling on and geeking out. “Man, and I still can’t get anything past peach fuzz.” He removed his hands and flopped back with a huff and a sigh from the bean bag beneath him. Michael rolled his eyes and tossed a Cheez Puff at Jeremy’s forehead.

“Alright, walk it off, you big baby.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re good.” Michael realizes, a second too late, he definitely now had Jeremy’s Cheez-Dust all over his face, and he shrieked a little and batted at his face frantically, spraying orange dust into the air and pulling an ugly snorting laugh out of Jeremy. “Shut up.”

“You shut up!” Jer fired right back, cocking his head up at a painful angle, and rolling onto his stomach ungracefully to flounder for an abandoned controller, tossed after Michael finally carefully bragged about his progress. “I’m gonna try this again.”  
  
“Wreck their shit,” Michael said, warmly, reaching for another puff and watching Jeremy reboot his Time Trial for the fifth time. If he beats all the Staff Ghosts he’ll unlock a new character. Michael watched a few more moments, waited, and heard something move upstairs.

“Dad’s home,” Jer said a moment later, as if in confirmation, though his gaze was still glued to the screen. Michael hesitated, and then shifted slightly. It was impossible to make a smooth exit from a sack full of glorified packing peanuts.

“I’m gonna go say hi?”  
  
Jeremy probably raised his eyebrows, Michael knows him too well, but he laid still anyways. This lap was going good, and he was nearing Mellian levels of calm and hyperfocused. “Yeah man, sure.”

Michael makes an exit.

He slipped up the stairs and was deposited in the hallway, which made for an easy wander into the kitchen, checking his reflection and wiping a few more crumbs off his face. He meant to just sorta mill about till he got found, not be caught in the middle of this, and so found himself staring at the Poland Springs nutrition facts when Jeremy’s dad came back into the room.

“Michael!” Mr. Heere was enthused. It was still an unfamiliar tone, but a nice one. Michael smiled, forced and a bit sudden, turning on his heel. His heart in his chest seemed convinced this was a bad idea, and he was nervous- he wasn’t, he told himself. Jeremy’s Dad would laugh it off at worse and help at best. He wouldn’t care.

Michael was getting better at one thing, at least. “That’s me,” he agreed, and decides not to waffle around in the small talk, because if he lets this get past the usual _how’re you doing kiddo_ he’s going to say _good_ and _nice pants_ and let himself be swept away back into the basement without getting what he wants. Clean cheeks, beyond the Cheez-Dust. “I need a favor,” he interrupted, forcing the words between _doing_ and _kiddo_ and feeling his heart thump extra hard and out of rhythm.

Jeremy’s dad handled it well, to his credit. While Michael squirmed and shifted his weight from foot to foot, he just raised his eyebrows and moved to the cabinet, pulling out a Middleborough Chess mug for his afternoon coffee. “Let me guess, lover’s quarrel?”  
  
This would be a lot easier if Jeremy’s dad wasn’t such a _dad_ . “Wh- no, we’re fine. We’re fine. Actually, uh, I was gonna ask if-” his hands itched for something to toy with, but his pockets were disappointingly empty, and his nails already bitten to the quick; he settled for pressing the tip of his thumb to a tooth, trying with no success to bite the dead skin at the tip. This shouldn’t be embarrassing.   
  
“If,” he prompted, ever so helpfully. God, he even has to go and be nice about helping Michael ask.

“Ifyoucouldhelpme _shave_ ,” Michael spit out in a hurry, embarrassed and Jeremy-esque. God, they really were a bad influence on eachother. He touched his upper jaw to say _for real look I need it_ but couldn’t make eye contact. His heart picked up its uncertain rhythm again and he tried to think louder _it’s fine it’s fine we did it it’s fine._ Asking favors was a Herculean task.

But with great risk came great reward. Mr. Heere smiled, and instantly something in Michael relaxed. He dropped his hand from his face only to be leaned toward and inspected seconds later, the idea for a mug of coffee already forgotten. “Of course I can. Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.” Oh. Hand on shoulder. He rolled his shoulder to displace it and kept walking, relieved when the touch was not persistent. “Can you believe I still haven’t had to teach Jeremy? Finally I get to hit the milestone.”

Michael wavered into guilt again at that. “Sorry to steal it from your real son.”  
  
Mr. Heere doesn’t seem to notice.  He shook his head, gestured Michael into the bathroom overdramatically, and started rooting in the cluttered drawers. “Who says you’re not real?” It takes a moment to sink in, while Mr. Heere continued to dump hotel shampoos and boxes of floss on the counter.

Michael placed a hand on the edge of the counter, too, suddenly warm and grateful for something cool and smooth beneath him to touch. Oh. “I tried to wing it already, but I ended up with a laceration,” he said, because if he said anything else he’d get mushy. Better to think gushy. Gushy blood, and a half-healed sore spot on his face.

Mr. Heere tsked, and finally emerged with an unopened pack of razors, way different from the blocky thing he’d first went with. The blades were finer beneath the plastic guard, and it had a thicker stripe above them. “You didn’t dry-shave.”

“I’m trans, not stupid,” Michael said dryly, and Mr. Heere took it well, snorting out a dry and almost uncomfortably Jeremy-reminiscent laugh.

“Against the grain, then?”

_… The grain?_

The silence was cut off with a sigh. “You have much to learn, young Padawan,” and Jeremy’s father leaned into the duty of that title by passing a facecloth, a razor, and a can of shaving cream (not tall and thin and lavender scented, but a short and squat Barbasol, he notes) to a substitute son, one Michael Mell. “Let’s start off with you washing that face. You’ll need some water, not too cold-”

“I know how to wash my face,” Michael groaned, but it was clearly meant more joke than condescension. So he rolled with it, and let it roll off his shoulders, and washed his face.

“Now, you’re going to want some shaving cream, about yea thick…” An example puddle was sprayed on the back of his hand, and another razor held to the knuckle. “Then drag down slowly, _with_ the grain, the way the hair is growing. No rushing allowed,” he was instructed. “Slow and steady wins the shave.” It was like he had years of bad jokes stored up and waiting.

His voice was confident, and practiced. Which was weird, considering it was both of their first times at this. Maybe he’d practiced, or maybe it was passed down from his own dad. It was definitely still weird tipping his head back to let Mr. Heere get under his chin with a blade, because like, primal animal instincts or whatever. Primal you’re-not- _my_ -Dad instincts, more like. Primal this-is-still-weird-right instincts, most like.

But when Michael got the first stroke down, he was rewarded with a hurrah, and when he had managed most of his jaw, the razor was taken from him to hit the missed spots with a few deft motions. And by the time Michael was all washed off, Mr. Heere was beaming, pride embarrassingly obvious in his smile as he tossed Michael the bottle of aftershave and cheered again, “Mazel Tov!” as he sprayed the first spritz almost directly into his mouth. And you know what? It didn’t feel that weird at all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> prompt taken from [here](http://chase-is-not-crash.tumblr.com/post/163726139922/trans-man-fics-i-want-a-trans-man-whos)!! everyone should click that and maybe even write a fic!!
> 
> im cis so if i made any uncomfy comments, please lmk so i can fix them and do better in the future! 
> 
> if u enjoyed this pls feel free to hit kudos and leave a comment maybe!!


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